synopsis ( which would indicate a lack of some detail )

that i consider politicians of any stripe to be thieving whores with the serendipitous ability to metamorphose their activities into some semblance of legality through the magic of legislation should be patently obvious by now...and the events of the past week will not put a stick in the spokes of the bicycle of state...it will embolden some...quiet none...and the wolves in the congress who feel themselves more capable of leadership than der furhair will be howling for the next twenty months or so...and virtually none of it will be to the benefit of the polity...in the wake of the "great exoneration" there is already a movement afoot ( probably spearheaded by the ever slimy mcconnell...why am i reminded of everet dirksen when old mitch is in the news? perhaps the oleaginous sycophancy is the common denominator here ) to repeal the affordable ( ha!) health care act and they will not stop there...what seriously has to be considered is the distinct possibility of a second term for trumpy if the unfortunate democratic party self destructs between now and election day ( to discount this possibility is delusional magical thinking...something the dithering left in this country seems adept at )...if that is the case they will go after medicaid, medicare, and social security with a ruthless efficiency that they are clearly capable of ...the question is why kill longstanding social programs and the answer i keep coming up with is debt...the only way to make "new" money is through interest charged on debt...the more debt the more money wealth rakes in and these people are inherently greed driven...their basic policy near as i can tell is to reduce the population at large to a sate of debt penury...they want it all...including your firstborn...and the first step in taking them is to kill anything that might prevent, forestall, or mitigate crippling debt..avarice is the prime mover...they have been making private liability into public debt for some time now...the levers of political control allow a lot of ethical latitude...trying to take it all would be the next logical step...the ghost of jay gould ( and, perhaps, charles tyson yerkes ) has returned to haunt a new age of economic disparity and gilded mansions...and the democrats...well..pelosi is wealth so she will, with a show of public reluctance, countenance this...and profit...the unfortunate few who lay to the left of her have no cogent plan ( the "green new deal" is stillborn and if there were any other "plan" it might have been able to be instituted when the shit hit the fan in 2008...there was none...one should be developed for the next time the economic equilibrium is punctuated by a greed based crisis ) all they have is an intellectual superiority complex that informs them the polity at large is far too stupid to grasp what is good for it and has to be led to it and have it rammed down its throat...which, incidentally, has a lot to do with why trump was elected in the first place...in the end all i can muster is a fair amount of disgust for the sham of "representative government" ( which has been a sham since 1789...the constitution is the counter revolution )...repulsive displays of political hypocrisy...even the buddha is trying not to puke.

privacy would seem to be relative to power

timing looms large in human events and mine seems totally fucked today...i wandered off to campus to have a shufti at the garden and, perhaps, pay a social call...it seems it is spring break because the normally packed lot was pretty much empty...

the garden is, as you would expect in the second week of march, bare as could be...there is some activity and i was going to blog about that but events vaporized that mood...

the state would seem to be funneling more money into a regional campus and the third floor of the library is closed...and, by extension, so is the archives...social call laid to rest...okay...i accept responsibility for not calling ahead...my responsibility for my mood...so far...what set me off completely was the campus flatfoot that decided i was a suspicious character and followed my progress around the campus up to and including into a rest room...it is a "community garden"...a public space..and there were times when parker and i were the garden and i resent this behavior and begin to see credence in the concept of liberal authoritarianism...had i left a trail of assaulted individuals in my wake i could countenance being followed but this clown's behavior was a bit much...knowing that google and amazon and facebook track my behaviors and profile my habits and knowing as well that in most public spaces i am on camera and that the state of indiana has scanned my image into a facial recognition data base through the aegis of their fucking "new, you can't fly without it get it by january i, 2020 license" is one thing...i can exert some control over some of that...telling the campus cop to go clock speeders on broadway probably wouldn't fly...so i walked out of the crapper and left campus and may...excepting the public space of the community garden...set foot on the fucking place again...fuck these people...there is a strain of elitist, vanguardist "i know better than you" condescension in the liberal world and that is what drives the bulk of the population to the center ...or to trump...get a grip...

if google has no time for privacy it would seem there is an "official" reaction going on...i stopped by city hall to pay the water bill ( a utility the municipality desperately wants to privatize ) and...after wondering if the parking lot is actually supposed to be turning from concrete to gravel...i went in and encountered this sign prominently displayed...

does that include lawyers? one would think something that is allegedly part of the public record should accommodate the public if they are so inclined...one presumes this prohibition includes the press...and the whole thing reeks of obfuscation...or...perhaps...when the criminal ex-mayor was working the kickbacks from the construction of this carnival ride ( drive past it at night sometime ) the courtroom took the biggest graft hit...either way, even stalin went out of the way to make his trials as public as possible so the lesson would be an overt one...sometimes power loses it s way.

opinion...take it or leave it

lots of political news out there...articles on the new leftist bent in the party nudging more conservative democrats to "the center" ( whatever that is )...the rise of "democratic socialism" and the reaction of a president suborning political violence...all part of american politics...past and present...it is clearly possible to run a successful election campaign calling yourself a "democratic socialist" on a local level...mayor, councilman, district representative to congress...like-minded people tend to congregate...human tribalism is probably genetic...so it isn't surprising to find some wandering in whoretown...succeeding in say a statewide campaign might be more difficult...many more congregations to convince...sanders is the only one i can name off the top of my head with much in the way of ability in this...and, as much as he is loved, his moment may have passed as the democrats do as much as they can to split their party as badly as it has been since humphrey's days...a national campaign as a "democratic socialist" may be challenging if not political suicide...2020 will mark a century since the last attempt by a self-proclaimed socialist to gain the presidency...eugene v. debs ran that year...against the likes of warren harding and james cox..he received 3.4% of the vote...913,693 people voted for him ( women voted in that presidential election for the first time incidentally...i haven't clue about the impact that had on debs' chances ) which stands as a record number of votes garnered by a "socialist" to this day...a cautionary tale there somewhere...he received no electoral votes...nor did he in 1900, 1904, 1908, or 1912...a symbolic candidacy at the best of times...the past is not the future...the future is indeterminate and the farther out you extend your event horizon the more variables that you cannot hope to see become involved in events...there could be a "democratic socialist" president...we could all just stop driving our automobiles too...it is a matter of probability...and the probability of a second term for trumpy is not zero...to think so is foolish and pretty much self-defeating...it has always been a very conservative country with pockets of left leaning people ( coincidentally many of those areas are located where there was a strong union presence..a possible motive for the hegemonic culture to want to snuff them out )...radical turns in politics...beyond the roosevelt years ( and that was more capital saving itself )... have generally been rightward...the next election is along way off...no one has the inside scoop and trump will not go quietly...neither will his yahoo base.

in the news

i have been perusing the n y times the past few days to see what the elite thinks of the rest of us and finding pretty much what i expected...

advertisers have always targeted children ( since i have been around anyway ...i know, i was one )...an effective way to get to parental purses and wallets...( and we will get back to some of the intricacies of parenting in a little bit here...i am one of those too )...new found concern over the impact isn't all that new...manipulation has a long history...

a billionaire bought a statue for millions that might only be worth thousands and donated it as a cultural artifact to a hawaiian museum...red faces ( and hands ) all round...

a financial advisor/guru decided "the old fashioned way " wasn't nearly fast enough...there's a surprise...good to know consequentialism is alive and well here...everybody wants money...a lot of it..and right fucking now...and while we're on the subject of wanting a lot of money...

here's yesterday's realty section winner...a whole floor in boston for $45 million...the buyers must be lining up..best bet is they are all chinese...or maybe saudis looking to diversify locations for extra-judicial killings...either way locals are pretty much priced out of the market...

and finally ( final because the cognitive dissonance the paper was engendering was creating a massive headache and i was forced to put it down ) rutger bergman, one of the cadre of "young activists" like ocassio-cortez..has been haranguing financial elites and pissing tucker carlson off ( who is that by the by...i don't watch television...the names are foreign )..the article says he comes from a generation that grew up after the fall of the berlin wall when ( per the ever irrelevant and ultimately ever so wrong francis fukyama ) all ideological struggles had been settled and is finding that pronouncement untrue and is setting about to reform the globe that has lapsed into ideological doldrums...well...speaking as someone who came of age in ideologically charged times and was on of tricky dicks's "vocal minority" ( mom was aghast at my "impeach nixon" button ) a cautionary word or two...the war in vietnam ended...nixon resigned...civil rights were enshrined in the "law of the land"...and things didn't essentially change which is why the new cadre are "activists"...it is entirely possible that mr. bergman may spend his life involved in radical assessments of hegemonic culture ( he has written four books..i have ordered one for an assessment...there may be more electrons spilled over this soon )..or he may settle down as a tenured superstar professor ( think maybe steven pinker ) at some august european university and inspire youth in the classroom while continuing to churn out books and articles and living comfortably...ocassio-cortez? give the state of the amazon debate and the open letters ( also in yesterday's times ) from the hegemony's heavy hitters in ny asking for another chance, it could be she will find herself out of office in 2020...or she will settle in for a ten term run, be turned, and become the next peolosi...surely the green new deal is stillborn ( on terms of whoretown and legislation anyway ) and too little too late..we will see what she says when the book comes out ( i will be reading a synopsis..i doubt i will have the patience for both bregmnan's book and hers...youth is a time of illusion...disillusion comes later )..a final word to both...under no circumstances become parents...that act will radically alter your thinking...in ways so gradual you will not notice..and in ways that will knock you out of your chair. addendum:i read bregman's book and found it not only accessible, but cogent as well...can't judge a book by its cover or an author by something in the times...my apologies and recommendation...i was mistaken...i get to be human too.

antness

"one thing that always strikes me as mysterious is that so many of the northern towns see fit to build themselves immense and luxurious public buildings at the same time they are in crying need of dwelling houses." george orwell from the road to wigan pier_________________________no mystery here george...just an expression of power that is meant to overawe the proles and instill in them what geert mak terms "antness'...a feeling of smallness and inferiority in the face of monumental public structures...

from the hideous "palace of parliament" in bucharest...

to the neo classical kitsch in washington d.c....

to the somewhat less imposing local architecture, the intent is still the same...the message is "power resides here" ( you can't fight city hall...unless you are in this town which has questionable competency in wielding authority ) and you should understand that you are a supplicant ( think kafka's keeper of the gates of the law ) despite the propagandized " of the the people, by the people, for the people" ( asking which people is a valid question ) propaganda from high school civics...why george should find this physical manifestation of bureaucratic power to be mysterious is beyond me...the intent is to snuff out any sort of questioning of the wisdom of the powerful before it is expressed...and if the architecture doesn't quite do the job there is an army of aparatchiks inside to exhaust you with interminable requests for "one more document"...it's all part of the hegemony's institutional diminution of the individual...and it is all for the benefit of a few and has been from the get go...for the umpteenth time, read the federalist papers...mein kampf wasn't the very first blueprint of political intent...it goes a long way in explaining how a kleptocrat wormed his way into the oval office...he isn't the first..just the noisiest.

mountains of useless drudgery

“his work is servile…he is paid just enough to keep him alive; his only holiday is the sack……consider what pleasure it can give anyone to think of men swabbing dishes for life. For there is n doubt that people, comfortably situated people, do find a pleasure in such thoughts. A slave, Marcus Cato said, should be working when he is not sleeping. It does not matter if his work is needed or not, he must work because work itself is good, for slaves at least. This sentiment still survives and it has piled up mountains of useless drudgery. I believe this instinct to perpetuate useless work is, at bottom, simply a fear of the mob. The mob ( the thought runs ) are such low animals that they would be dangerous if they had leisure; it is safer to keep them too busy to think.” -George Orwell Down and Out in Paris and London_____________ denying the mob the leisure time to think or the assets that would make that leisure possible is a continuing theme in orwell’s writing…and there is validity to that view…the elite fears the mob’s number and they hate a populist ( the root of the n y times and Washington post’s loathing of don trump…not his arrogance or pre-teen behavior…it was his appeal to a populist base that fired them up )…and the current “gig” economy has people jumping from part-time job to part-time job…juggling schedules and working long hours to make ends meet…the mob may indeed be discontent in this but they are exhausted by the stress and so fatalistic…”that’s just the way it is” is something i hear a lot…but few are pondering “why” that’s the way it is or what might conceivably be done about it…so why do we keep working…we all need material goods to survive…food, clothing, shelter…so there is the survival element of work that keeps people at it…there is a dichotomy at work here however…the hegemonic culture long ago discovered there is money in necessities…their greed also told them there wasn’t enough…there had to be another method of extraction that paid better…and the solution was to pay the mob marginally more…not enough to make them truly comfortable…but enough to create the appearance of comfort…or, at least, to allay the fear of imminent death from starvation or exposure…and then take back that small excess and a little more by engineering desires and establishing a system of credit…debt makes new money far faster than selling shoe laces and razor blades…raise the level of debt to meet income…people are still hustling to pay the bills…but the bills are larger because of the perceived need of “stuff” engendered by a materialist propaganda system that tells us what we need…which is another convenient way of keeping the mob balkanized by “branding”…ford/chevy…nra/gun control…democrat/republican ( with both parties in the pay of the elite pretending to be ideologically opposed while cohabiting )…pepsi/coke…which beings up a germane point…i read an article on line about coke preparing to introduce “a new flavor” and the fact that “people are nervous”…well… is orange-vanilla coke which admittedly does sound frightening ( and remember you are dealing with someone who cut soda [ along with hfcs ] out of his diet eleven years ago…i may be biased )…there were some twitter posts quoted in the article…both in favor of and questioning the need for a “new” flavor…there was one that was both germane to my point and instructive ( i think anyway )…” soda is poison but i will be first in line for orange vanilla coke”…are we branded or what? i left out the twitter handle…mostly so i don’t get a lot of blowback from the preprogrammed robot that posted it ( or the corporate shill that was paid to do it )…a fair example of reflexive consumption…habitual…no wonder they do so many surveys and mine data on facebook…or google…or wherever they can…orwell is correct…we do this to ourselves… he said that if the mob thought it would have organized a union and gone on strike for better treatment…that’s one habit we have not developed yet…too busy debating coke.

the billionaires sit down to eat

jeff bezos has assembled a team of crack jurists to take it to american media and the specious and fatuous scandal rag they call the enquirer which litters the floors of bathrooms everywhere for any number of worthwhile purposes...as bathmats say...one supposes the heart of the matter lies with the cozy relationship between the enquirer's publisher and the irredeemable clown in the white house and his social media war with the publisher of the washington post...a scandal rag of somewhat better repute...it would perhaps be instructive to ponder on what might be the subtexts of this very public and vindictive feud...so what do we follow here...money or ego? since the two are inextricably entwined...especially in the case of the two major protagonists...we will probably have to deal with both...so..minor players first..the appropriately named david pecker...enquirer honcho and trump sycophant...ran an expose on bezos' extra-martial affair and allegedly threatened to publish embarrassing photos of bezos and his enamorata if he didn't call off a private investigator...clearly this bozo sees circulation and so profit as well as an offensive against one of his hero's detractors...a cog in the trump propaganda machine and a fine example of the consequentialist ethos of capitalism...because of a plea deal last year he and the enquirer may be in trouble here as the feds are nosing around...no matter though as long as the good work goes on...the president ( i was never overly impressed with the office or the whoring politicians who held it...still...after this stint of nonsense it will never be redeemed...a term of opprobrium from here out ) sees political mileage if he can discredit bezos and, through him, the washington post, which seems second only to the new york times in its loathing of trumpy..and if he and/or his family can turn a buck in the process of an attempted character assassination so much the better...money is the measure intelligence...right? and on the subject of money...with a messy public divorce and obvious continuing legal entanglements, bezos is clearly in line to lose a bundle..that said, amazon and the washington post aren't going anywhere ( despite the trumptard's continued inane twitter assaults...absolutely the best case against social media i can think of...and yes, i see the irony of this in posting this link on social media ) i don't think we need worry about jeff missing a meal...he will be alright...he says he is standing up to pecker because he wants to defend the small fry the enquirer might go after who do not possess his resources...laudable if true...sounds more like pr spin...cover for the darker motives of wealth and ego...the deeper motivations in this are an education into the ethos of wealth and power...whoever has the most wins while the rest sulk and scheme to take back what they can...the government here was never "by and for the people"...a shiny lie that perpetrated by madison and co. all those years ago...and deeply abetted by the great emancipator...currently we are being schooled in what it is really all about...pay attention.